On weekdays that I work at home, I will sometimes go off for lunch to a nearby good Punjabi / Indian buffet lunch place and work over Mutter Paneer, naan and so on, finishing off with a nice Gulab Jamun or ten. And I read the papers. The freebie ones in the lobby for the locals to read about what’s going on back in India.
It’s a very different world, folks, depending on your background, your viewpoint and your sources for information. Here, we tend to be amagamated into a CNN/AP world in the USA, and I strongly feel that that’s hardy objective enough. I regularly read British, Irish and Australian stuff online, and English-Language news from elsewhere - I used to read Der Spiegel all the time, but my German’s getting dodgy from lack of use and it’s not easy to find on the stands.
And in the Indian press and community, there’s a whole different outlook on things you and I might see in a different light. Chinese and South Asians line up to go through the endless awful tedium of the Immigration system to get into this country - make themselves look like an attractive hire, so to speak - and here we’re talking about a gazillion Latinos jumping the fence when there’s tens of thousands of South Asians playing by the rulles and waiting years and years to get in…and when they do, they’re treated as third-class stealing-outjobs-and-secretly-wanting-to-blow-us-up-for-jihad from people who wouldn’t recognize a Sikh from an Ayatollah - hey, they both have turbans and beards, right?
Or there’s another hot issue which is not in your papers…the Pope and the Indian government getting into a huge fight. The present opposition party in this supposedly secular state is a Hindu Nationalist organization that had its roots in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an odious outfit that basically feels that India should be a purely Hindu state for the Hindus, and their own version of conservative Hinduism. Which does not include Christians (who have been in India for 2000 years), Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists (all Hindu heresies, as far as they’re concerned, at best), Muslims and so on.
Same bunch assassinated the man who said: “As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side”.
Hokay. So the Popes have never been fond of the Hindu nationalists, especially when they decide to make the local laws tough on the operation of churches in India. (Most of the ancient congregations in India are affiliated with the Catholic Church; there’s been missionary work among the poor and suffering in India for a loooong time by various denominations, including such danger spots as Mother Teresa in the Calcutta slums.)
The most recent stuff is where some Indian states are putting up laws that assume that anyone that wants to become a Christian is being forced and/or bribed to do it - so they make it illegal to convert, while hyped-up politicians stir up nutball mobs to burn missionaries and their children alive in a ‘proper Hindu cremation’. Guy had been in India as a teacher and caretaker to lepers and the poorest of the poor for 35 years, and gets roasted with his 11 and 7 year old sons in a Jeep they were sleeping in.
The Pope sees this as religious intolerance and not suitable for a secular democracy. The head of the Hindu party says that the Pope can stuff it, and that the conversions are coerced, and taking advantage of the poor peoples’ bad situations to entice them into the eeeviles of Christianity. And if the Pope doesn’t stuff it:
“We have to exercise restraint in our reactions to any given situation lest our harsh reactions might generate militant mood in society to the detriment of harmony.”
Translation: Me and the boys can, get, like, provoked, ya know?
The editorial dude in the Indian paper thought this was crapola, and said something like: If you are trying to promote the Hindu faith, do it by going out there and showing the good side of the faith and helping those people, rather than sitting on your money to build fancier temples. If you can’t deal with the concept of competition because these mission people care and show it and you don’t and show it, what does that say about you and what you believe and how you behave?
Note: I’m not Catholic, and I am Christian but not an Evangelical by any stretch of the imagination. What this was more about, to me, was the question of the teachings of my favorite Bible verse: Matthew 5:16 - which says a lot to me about our mission as people in the world. We need to live what we say we believe in a positive manner, in such a way that we inspire others with the same passion, the same sense of mission, and to bring out a positive light in their lives through example and inspiration. Not a stirring up for purely political points or power, or to stuff your religious down someone’s throat and dance around them as they burn, but to go and do positive things for the better nature of man, and to remind him or her that that better nature exists in themselves and is worth preserving and promoting.
I bring that passion into different things in my life, in the search to do the right thing for myself and others. It’s the reason why I struggle for the right thing to do in political life, in government, in human affairs and for my own family. And this whole thing made me think long and hard about how people will insist on the enforced status quo, but never do anything positive to support it. Talk about The Family and Our Culture and never do much concrete and positive to support either while watching the bucks roll in and jerking political power chains. A living wage? Feh. Long term security, better health, a better life? Feh. Easier to work on your fears and stir up crusades about enforcing Bans and picking out pariahs and unbelievers who need to get worked over.
And yes, I understand cultural degeneracy. It starts when you no longer live a positive message yourself and don’t care about the people you minister to, and give them something real to believe in as a way of life. It takes serious root when you don’t work for the better life of your flock and concentrate too much about your next golfing trip. And when you endorse negative, anti-life fanaticism in your people as a way of existance, you give the rest of us not much to believe in in what you say or do.
